Teacher 'help' crosses the line

Thursday

Aug 23, 2007 at 12:01 AMAug 23, 2007 at 7:08 AM

STOCKTON - Some of the students who took out their No. 2 pencils to take standardized tests this spring got extra help at a few local schools that, in some cases, amounted to cheating, local school officials said.

Zachary K. Johnson

STOCKTON - Some of the students who took out their No. 2 pencils to take standardized tests this spring got extra help at a few local schools that, in some cases, amounted to cheating, local school officials said.

Three school districts in San Joaquin and Calaveras counties reported to the state four cases in which teachers read students portions of a test, taught students during test time, used actual test questions to prepare students or copied questions from a test booklet.

In each case, the local districts notified the state after learning of these incidents, school officials said. The yearly tests form the foundation of state and federal school accountability programs. Schools that don't have enough students with high and rising test scores can face harsh sanctions.

"We take it seriously," said Dianne Barth, a spokeswoman for the Stockton Unified School District. At August Elementary School, teachers reported another teacher gave tips on punctuation during a test, and at McKinley Elementary School, a proctor saw a teacher writing down questions from a test booklet, she said.

"Helping students get the answers is cheating," Barth said.

Stockton Unified conducted an investigation in both incidents and placed both teachers on paid leave. The board has recommended dismissal for one of the teachers, she said. Stockton Unified's research department aggressively seeks out cheating and irregularities on these tests, like looking for unusual amounts of erasure marks, she said. Regulations require prompt reporting of irregularities to the state, but the test scores also serve as benchmarks used to mark improvement in the district. It's not often that these types of incidents occur, she said.

"I think it's pretty isolated," Barth said.

Myriad rules and procedures are in place - from the time a school first gets its copies of standardized tests to the way schools store completed tests - to protect the integrity of the testing process. The state Department of Education requires school districts notify the state of any test-taking incidents that might compromise the test results. These incidents include coaching students, discussing test questions and pointing to test answers.

Incidents also can include using test questions to prepare for the test itself or security breaches, such as if a student leaves the testing area with a copy of the standardized tests.

Critics of the standardized tests say the stakes of performing well on tests is high enough to tempt individuals and institutions to sometimes cheat to post better test scores.

Just how often school districts report irregularities to the state is unclear. Nobody at the state Department of Education who could provide even an estimate as to the number of reported irregularities each year was available on Wednesday, a spokeswoman said. But an investigation into irregularities by the San Francisco Chronicle in May reported at least 123 schools since 2004 had reported irregularities.

"It's an unfortunate byproduct of the state pressure everyone is under with those tests," said William Chiechi, principal and superintendent at Oak View Elementary School and the district. He was speaking of the state as a whole. His district reported to the state when a teacher used questions from a standardized math test to help prepare students to take the test, he said. "We felt it was inappropriate, so we reported it."

Joan Herman, director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing at the University of California, Los Angeles, said, "There's tremendous pressure on schools to improve on standardized tests." But she added teachers and school districts, for the most part, can be relied upon to act professionally.

"Ninety-nine-point-nine percent of teachers wouldn't cheat - no matter what," but there are a few who do, she said.

At Valley Springs Elementary School in Calaveras County, a substitute teacher began reading a passage from an exam testing reading, said Jim Frost, superintendent of the Calaveras Unified School District. It was a mistake; another teacher saw it, and the district reported it right away, he said.

"The fact that we caught it and reported it - it show's something's working," he said.